Okay, I am going out on a limb here, but cars and fast food go hand in hand, especially in the ’50s and ’60s. Burgers, fries and fins, what a combination, right? So, does anyone remember these Arby’s signs? The one on Brady Street in Davenport was still standing in the mid-’90s, but has been gone for years, replaced with a boring, Camry LE-esque sign. The new ones have NOTHING on the old ones. But this one is still standing in Galesburg. I was on the way home from the Monmouth car show, stopped at a gas station to top off the wagon, and took this picture from across the street. Cool, huh?
So have any of you CCers seen any cool vintage fast food, dealership or gas station signs recently? Inquiring minds want to know. Pictures would be even better!
I love old signage that’s still in use, there was an Arbys down here that used to have the hat, but I haven’t been in that area in a while, don’t know if its still there.
First of all, that is NOT the original building. The original Arby’s had a curbed roofline with a front filled with windows. It mimicked the hat sign and had a design similar to other drive-ups. As a matter of fact, the “arch” cut out across the front of this circa-1970s restaurant mimicks the original building’s arched cowboy hat-styled roofline of the original Arby buildings.
That is the original sign. But coupled with the original building, Arby’s back in the early 1960s were damn ugly. The sign is too big, the wrong color and screaming for attention. At night the entire outer edge strobed and chased in lights.
Exactly why does a “roast beef” sandwich chain need an oversized cowboy hat design in it’s building and sign anyway?
The cowboy hat design was used to tie into the popularity of western television shows, movies and fashion at the time and has not a damn thing to do with the kind of food found inside these faux cowboy hats.
Crossing my fingers that this show’s up, but here is an original Arby’s sign and (what I assume) is the original architecture in Ann Arbor, MI
I think Seattle may still have at least one or two of these still standing as of now, however, I could be wrong.
I’m especially thinking of the one down on 4th Avenue South in Seattle’s SODO district (South of the Dome).
Here’s one I took a couple of years ago of a vintage “mission style” Taco Bell in Palo Alto (of course, it’s no longer in operation) …
Wow, a mission style Taco Bell, I think rival Taco Viva also similar styled restaurants too.
There are the remains of one of these down here that still has the shape, but it has been occupied by a succession of failed restaurants, its currently vacant waiting for its next victim.
There’s one of these still in business near me. It’s somehow survived not having a drive-thru, but if I’m remembering correctly the inside is open pretty late. I notice Taco Bell seems to do most of their business from 9PM onwards and mostly with stoned kids.
Around here they actually make the franchise owners update their places to match their advertising. Yeah, I still love our old KFC that is now a laundrymat.
The Pizza Hut I knew growing up is now a swimming pool supplies shop, still has the original roof which is a bit incongruous.
I wasnt stoned, but drunk, when visiting “Taco Smell” late at night.
Speaking of KFC and being stoned the most popular reuse of an old Kentucky Fried Chicken building in Los Angeles is to turn it into a medical marijuana dispensary. They even made a South Park episode about it.
Taco Hell, Taco Belch, they all work.
Where is it?
Huh, never paid attention to the “mission style” architecture. Wonder if all had it like that.
I do try to find old signs and get excited when I see an old Taco Bell or Burger King sign. I’ve also seen old McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut. Oh and Taco Maker (not sure if a US chain). I’ll try to take a picture next time I stumble upon them.
All the Taco Hells had the “mission” architecture in their early days…before Pepsico bought them and combined them with smaller KFCs. They were mostly in the South-Southwest…I moved to Houston in 1981 and found them for the first time. They were just in the process of replacing the non-lighted TACO BELL letters over the mission bell, with a backlighted plastic-facia sign that covered up the hole where the bell was removed. So, I guess, Pepsico had just bought them.
Since then, of course, they retrenched, restyled, made the bland more bland…lesser filling, more dough. Thanks-no-thanks; I lived in Texas and California and I’ve had REAL Mexican food.
We got a mission-style Taco Bell in Fort Wayne in the early 70s. My best friend and I rode our bikes there. He had been there once before, but not me. I read the menu, and felt like I must be in Mexico, because I had no idea what anything on the menu was. But I was not going to fall back on the “Bellburger” that was like a mexican sloppy joe. My friend ordered first, then I got what he was getting. Can you imagine a 13 year old now who has never heard of a burrito?
My high school roommate once remarked “man, doncha just love burritos?” My response was, “what’s a burrito?” He sneered at me and said, “you grew up in Mexico and don’t know what a burrito is?”
Really, we didn’t have them in Mexico City in the late ’50s-early’60s. You could find flour tortillas in the DF if you looked hard enough, but nobody in their right mind ate them. My guess is that burritos began as a southern California regional thing. Other fusion dishes that were unknown in Mexico City were Nachos (Tijuana), chimichangas (Arizona), and fajitas (San Antonio food truck). TexMex is just what it says it is, Mexican cuisine born in Texas, and heavily influenced by German cooking that featured gravy (smothered) and melted cheese that only became popular on TexMex after cheese could be shipped on refrigerated rail cars from the north in the early 1900s. That’s today’s lesson on Mexican fusion cooking.
Thanks for the detail. Despite having lived in the Southwest for years now, I no longer assume I know what Mexicans really eat. And it varies by Mexican state, too. All I can say for Taco Bell is, it’s a cheap meal.
BTW, mission style is also common among Southwest train stations, L.A. being just one famous example.
Re tortillas, one of my verbal pet-peeves: Even the British, like Mexicans, use the correct word, maize, for what we Americans confusingly call corn, a word supposed to connote *any* cereal grain. I believe it dates from the early colonial era, before wheat could be cultivated & all they had was “Indian corn.”
I ate at that exact Arby’s two days ago, Tom. The interior is vintage, too (not in a retro way, it just has never been ‘remodeled,’ so it’s kind of inefficiently laid out).
Saw several CCs go past while I was eating, too!
I ate at an Arby’s back in May in NW Pennsylvania. That will never happen again.
The Arby’s on Hwy. 32 in Cudahy, WI still has a sign like that.
Other real classics? Not sure. We have retro-styled McDonald’s, but they’re not old; they were consciously built that way.
I just passed that one a few weeks ago.
Kenosha has two old-style ex-Taco Bells. One has a local Mexican restaurant; the other is a payday loan place. I think they still use the drive-thru.
I grew up in Kenosha!!!
I remember the Taco Bell on 60th and 39th that’s now a payday loan place. The other one is on south Sheridan Road near 80th.
The old KFC on 60th that’s been a Chinese restaurant for awhile.
There’s one of those “new/retro” McDonald’s on Milwaukee Avenue in Libertyville. They also took away the 50’s-themed McDonald’s by Gurnee Mills and gave it the “new look”. It looks like a small, tan square. Really boring.
I pass that Arby’s in Cudahy all the time which made me wonder what this article is about, because I think of the sign in the picture as the current sign
I have a pic around here somewhere of a vintage Taco Bell sign (with the “sleeping sombrero” on top) that I took in Savannah, GA relatively recently, about 5 years or so ago.
There was one of these original Arby’s signs at their location on Burnet Road in Austin, TX, up until not that long ago, not sure if it’s still there.
Burger King changed their signage not that long ago, but they’ve apparently done a good job of changing most or all them. I haven’t seen an original BK sign around here (Houston) in several years.
On a side note, I wish they’d bring back the Holiday Inn “Great Sign.”
The old Burger King logo is hard to find, BK’s HQ is down here in Miami, they used to have a high rise back in the back in the 70’s with a huge Burger King logo on each side of the building.
The Great Sign is gone, never to be seen again. Most of them were deliberately scrapped; collectors and private museum types have gone to extraordinary lengths to recover the few left.
They aggressively do NOT use that sign or logo anymore. Image, dontcha know. That sign, with the pulsating incandescent bulbs…it’s SO 1960s..
Pretty cool, I think it fits – always love coming across old signs, especially with neon or some other kinda elaborate lighting. I actually can’t remember ever seeing this one, cuz I’ve never lived anywhere near an Arby’s. There are a few of them in the rest stops on the NY Thruway, though, and I’ll always stop there when I take a trip anywhere upstate.
There’s an awesome independent burger joint a couple towns over where very little has changed since they opened sometime in the 60s – they even use the same wrappers and cups with alphanumeric phone numbers on them, and only take cash! I’ve got off from work today and this post has inspired me to go there for lunch.
So by getting lunch here, I was rewarded with a very appropriate CC sighting. Probably only a tribute car of sorts (’77 registration), but the burger stand is only a few miles down the road from the former Baldwin Chevrolet and Motion Performance locations.
I, too, miss the expressive signs of old. Done right, they added character, but I believe that contributed to their downfall when communities wanted a more “classy” up-scale appearance and less clutter.
A recently-built White Castle in my community could not be a “porcelain palace” traditional White Castle style, but had to be “West Chester-ized” i.e. brick and stucco-style to match up to the standard set for new business construction.
It’s still nice, however.
Here’s my favorite, and a landmark of Cincinnati along Vine Street just off Paddock & I-75. Still a car dealer, but originally a Pontiac dealer in the 1950s, later Cherokee Motors.
Steak-and-Shake still has an original style building and sign in Springfield, MO; it’s on a section of old US 66, so perhaps there is a reason why.
I also stumbled across an original style A&W about an hour north of here. It still had the fireplace in the dining room outlined with a table and chairs facing it. It looked very 1970.
My friend and I frequented this Stake and Shake in his ’65 Impala 283 4-speed. Better than any Cars and Coffee today. From the back seat I was able to feel-up his girlfriend riding shotgun. C, please take note. Her nickname was Beaver.
The Arby’s on Broad Street in Richmond still has the big hat sign. The restaurant opened in 1969 and has changed very little since.
I had a hunch you might chime in 🙂
Arby’s in Kent, OH (right off campus from Kent State U) has the old style sign as well. It’s been a while since I was over there, but Google maps shows it. I just typed “arby’s kent, ohio” and it came up. That’s the best I can do for pictures 🙂
The last old style Arbys hat sign I remember was also down the street from a big university. Gainesville FL. Home of the Gators. I used to drive out of my way just to get 5 roast beef sandwhiches for $5 when ever I drove up to the track that was on the other way out of town. I remember it well as it would piss me off because the parking lot was “old fashioned” with barely enough room for me to squeeze my tow rig and trailer in and still have enough room to get back out of there.
It’s still there! I live in Kent so I see it on a regular basis.
In San Diego, der Wienerschnitzel restaurants (fast food hot dogs) used to be A-frames with the drive through in the middle. Most of the original ones are now taco shops. Some of the later ones tried to keep the same look from street level after they went with more traditional fast food layouts.
Another example of American foreign-language mangling. It’s supposed to be neuter: *Das* Wienerschnitzel, a dish not even on their menu.
OK, I’m a grammar nazi.
Newer ex Wienerschnitzel:
American fast food didnt get here untill the 70s when KFC opened a store in Takapuna, now we have all the flavours and local outfit Burger Fuel has nice promotional cars in Napier in the shape of a 70 Chevelle, no callout badges but I asked 350/350 he said it goes ok, I dont like the wheels. Its on the cohort so is the 70 Holden outside the Toyota shop in the background
Bryce have you heard the story about Burger King & New Zealand.
Apparently when BK came to Australia in the 1970s (following McDonald’s?) they found the Burger King name was already in use on a burger shop in Adelaide. After being unable to buy the name, they came up with the name “Hungry Jack’s” to use in Australia. An enterprising Kiwi gent heard about this and opened a Hungry Jack’s in NZ hoping to be receiving a big offer. He was disappointed when Burger King just opened up under their original name!
Not recently, but I remember that this was a Texaco gas station in the City of Nijmegen.
Opened in 1936 and closed down in 1977. Now it’s an architect’s office.
Ancient pictures: http://www.noviomagus.nl/Gastredactie/VDPijll/AutoPalace75.htm
More pictures how it is now: http://www.noviomagus.nl/vrijgeb13.htm
Oh how I wish gas stations still (or ever) looked like that… very cool. I actually kinda remember seeing this one on a TV program once, but I might be confusing it with something else.
Yes Sean, it sure is special and quite unique. It’s a “Rijksmonument” now, that’s the highest rank when it comes to the preservation of historical buildings.
Believe me, it has seen bad, very bad days in the years after it was closed down as a gas station.
By the way, back in 1936 it was also a Renault and Fargo dealership (“Auto Palace”) as you can see in the link.
I’ll have to watch “A Bridge Too Far” to see if it shows up on screen, but I don’t think so…
That battle was in Arnhem, Nijmegen is a bit further to the south.
However, the glass tower was illuminated at night, they say you could see it at a distance of more than 5 miles.
About the movie: filmed in Deventer, even further up north.
I’m pretty sure it won’t show up there….
Arby’s in Niagara Falls, NY still had the hat sign last time I was out that way, and according to Google maps, it apparently still does.
http://goo.gl/maps/Trv1O
Neon “french fry guy” with dancing french fries on top of Hutch’s restaurant in Hamilton, Ontario.
http://goo.gl/maps/LvGbD
The Oasis Drive-in restaurant in Caledonia still has their neon sign.
http://goo.gl/maps/S7qMp
This one’s not fast food, but it was a part of the car culture – a famous place to stop on the long trip to vacations in eastern New England. We went to Yokens in Portsmouth, NH every year on our way to Maine for vacation. 72 Vega wagon, Dad, Mom, 2 kids, tons of camp gear, and my uncle’s big fiberglass canoe on top , several feet longer than the car… 90 degrees and no A/C. I have vivid memories of their strawberry shortcake.
Alas, it closed in 2004, but apparently they are going to refurbish the sign, including its animation, and put it back up on the new strip mall.
That’s a great sign! Too bad the place shut down, but at least they’re saving the sign.
Yeah…but is that a good slogan for a restaurant?
“Thar, she blows!!”
I get images of some twenty-year-old coed cutie heaving chunks after her first drunk on wine coolers….maybe she’s a bit overweight and the guys getting her drunk are making “whale” jokes on the side…
We ate there many times when my Dad was a visiting professor at UNH one summer (back in ’70, I think).
Tom…Just wanted to thank you for pointing out one of the memories that are often triggered by seeing the world…or just your town… by car. I am sure we all ate or hung out in places like Arby’s and Taco Bell a lot more in our youth than in our later years.
Who still haunts them now?
As an aside, I was disappointed during my trip to Alaska last year to see that even in Anchorage everything seems to have become homogenized. It was full of the same big box stores and national chain restaurants that we find EVERYWHERE. Boring!
Alaska was interesting the first time I ever visited there around 1995, it was like Anchorage was like a semi time warped mid sized American city, all the buses were GM Fishbowls, all the logos and signs were at least 10 years out of date, there still was a “Penny’s” logoed JC Penny.
I believe the Arby’s on Broad St. in Athens, GA still has their hat sign. Up until they remodeled a couple of years ago, the building still had the original architecture.
The Arby’s on U.S. 1 in Laurel, MD still has this. Further north, until a few years ago, the old AMC dealership on the same road still displayed the AMC logo on the vacant building. It has since been taken over by a used car lot.
I was just going to post the same thing. I ate there while picking up stuff from an auction of a TV shop that closed down a couple blocks away. The inside didn’t look like it had been touched since the 1980’s. Think wallpaper and knotty pine.
Albany, NY has a ‘Nipper'(Rca Dog):
The building is now a moving company.
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/1910
Used to live right near there… Albany is a city full of relics.
I used to drive a school bus route past ol’ Nipper every day.
This sign stood on Broadway in Bangor ME from the 1960s until just a couple of years ago.
sorry, my picture didn’t show:
I suspect that the strength of the franchise agreement is key here. For years, there was one of the original little Arbys restaurants here – the narrow building with the high arched ceiling, with the old sign out front. They offered items that had been dropped from corporate menus years ago – like the black cow milkshake. Dairy Queen is another franchise famous for loosey-goosey contracts that gave HQ very little control over a lot of the older franchises. McDonalds, by contrast, has a very strong central command and has long held tight control over franchisees. Still, somehow a McDonalds in Muncie, Indiana kept the old “Speedee Service” sign for eons. Not sure if it has been replaced, but it was still there in the 80s at least.
Edit – this internet picture with a McCafe drink picture low on the sign would indicate that it is still there.
McDonalds allowed “retro” for a few years, back a decade or so ago…they were building a few small free-standing units reminiscent of the old hamburger stands, and used Speedee on some new signs.
That went away; but I think those that have are allowed to keep.
I saw an old Arby’s hat sign in Erie, PA back in July. There was also an Arby’s near our motel, but it was one of the new ones.
As a child in the late fifties and early sixties my mother would take us to a nearby Dairy Queen in Ottawa. My brother recently told me that, despite local and heritage objections, head office forced the franchisee to change the sinage to the modern DQ signs. This surprises me as there is a Dairy Queen in Toronto that has been open since 1949 in the same building and it still has the Dairy Queen signs. I am guessing that I should take a picture sometime soon.
I might add that I think the reason that you still see some of these older signs might have to do with local zoning and not franchise agreements. Just about every place I have lived, they have passed ordinances about how tall a sign can be,etc. Older signs are usually grandfathered in.
Actually we had one here in Bessemer, AL until about a month ago. The Arby’s itself had been closed for a few years but the sign was still up and the building still stood.
I remember going there with my grandmother when I was a kid and loving the curly fries so it made me a little sad to see that it was gone.
Burger Chef, the “wanna-be” McDonald’s/Burger King…
We didn’t do all that much fast food when I was a kid, but when we did, it was Burger Chef much more often than McDonalds, just because the BC was closer to home.
Wow, there’s a flashback. “Burger Chef & Jeff!” Where is/was this?
Here’s the original McDonald’s in Des Plaines Il opened in 1955 not far from where I grew up. Then and now, it’s now a museum. I do remember going there as a small child when burgers were 15 cents.
Here’s a Dairy Queen I happened upon while visiting Brandon, South Dakota, two years ago.
I’m glad to see the vintage Arby’s signs around. When I was a kid in the early ’70s that sign was my landmark that we were almost to our great-aunt & uncle’s house in Ft. Worth, TX…the CC connection to that memory being that he had a mint ’55 Crown Victoria, a LeSalle, a ’49 Ford and later the last new Ranchero sold.
Would this “Sunoco Custom Service” in Pawtucket, RI count? I know the paint is faded and some of the letters are falling off, but it definitely stands out from today’s station architecture.
(Via Google Street View; search for “Art’s Sunoco”.)
Sunoco doesn’t count unless it’s got a pump with Sunoco 260 Action gas!
The Arbys on the South side of Lansing MI still has the old style hat, but the building was remodeled years ago.
On the other hand, East Lansing has a coffee place in an old style Arbys building.
As to the Arbys…most of the original ones closed. We had three in the ten-mile general area of my home, when I was a kid and Arby’s was new. They were there…and then gone. Space of about five years. One went private-label…apparently the franchisee didn’t want to pay Arby’s for the use of a dubious name (Arby’s, the R-B sandwich, get it?) and restyled his joint. Put a face under the hat of the sign…and then, wouldn’t ya know, the whole sign caught fire from the inside on a Saturday night. Nice little display; but that was it for the hacked-up Arbys hat.
The private-name joint failed a year or so later; and someone bought it and made it into an Arby’s again. Without undoing the redone architecture. The covered-wagon roof was gone forever; but that reconstituted Arby’s has lasted about five times as long as the first go-round.
There’s a “cowboy hat” Arby’s sign still in service on Snelling Avenue, just south of 36, in Roseville, Minnesota. If you’ve ever been to MSRA, Car Craft, or any of the other car shows at the State Farigrounds you’ve likely seen it. Glad it’s remained over the years and through the remodels.
How can we forget Howard Johnson’s? Do not think it exists anymore but use to see the orange roofs all the time.
According to Wikipedia, there’s either two or three functioning Howard Johnson’s left – two in upstate New York and one in Bangor, Maine. There was a really unique one in Asbury Park, NJ and from a quick Google search it looks like the building is still there – it was still operating until fairly recently, closed maybe 10 years ago or so.
Only two left; and they are there without any support.
Howard Johnson’s, the restaurant brand, is technically owned by an LLP called Franchise Associates, Inc. They bought it from the British firm that sold the Howard Johnson’s hotel franchise to its current owners. HoJo’s had been neglected and then started falling like dominoes about fifteen years ago; Franchise Associates was a group of HoJo’s owners. They tried to reverse the trend but were undercapitalized and untrained, and apparently abandoned the effort.
http://www.hojoland.com/locations.html
http://www.hojoland.com/ghosts.html
The old Howard Johnson’s are out there, if you know what to look for.
I’d done background on this for an essay I never got to writing…my mother was from the East Coast, HoJo territory…there was one not far from my grandmother’s place, where we’d have breakfast when visiting (she was 500 miles from our home) and another in the Adirondacks where we’d have dinner twice or so on our two-week annual vacation.
So, HoJo’s figured big in my childhood. Years later, I was flash-transfered to a new town while working on the railroad…needed breakfast fast before work; and there was the familiar Bob Evans. Same place; same menu. It hit me how Bob Evans took the place of Howard Johnson’s so neatly.
Childhood meals at HoJo’s as well. At one time, they were at the service plazas on the Penna Turnpike. We had one in New Haven, Indiana as well, into the 70s.
Also check out orangeroof.org, another good site that chronicles most of the original HJ locations.
Ah yes, HoJo’s. Much like with purpose-built Pizza Hut buildings that have been changed to other uses, it’s usually pretty easy to tell an old HoJo restaurant or motor lodge building when you see it. More and more of them are being torn down though…
Most of the Arby’s restaurants in the Flint, MI area still have their “hat” signs (at least according to Google street view).
It’s not quite streetscape signage, but this has always been a favorite. I took it from a moving car (not driving) and though it’s blurred, I kind of like how it came out.
And this one’s a short distance away. It also looks better at night, but I took this image from google street view.
The Arby’s location in Flint, MI on Miller Rd still has the “old” hat sign as of a few months ago. According to my mother, that sign and building have been there for 40+ years as Flint’s first Arby’s.
There seem to be a lot left in Michigan. The one on Telegraph Rd in Pontiac still has the sign.
Old Arbys Hat sign still in usage in South Redondo Beach CA on Pacific Coast Highway.
…apparently the old Arbys in Redondo Beach closed in 2022 🥲